Mike Greenlar / The Post-Standard, 2008MAGNA POWERTRAIN of New Process Gear, on New Process Gear Drive in DeWitt, might close if a turnaround plan, which includes cutting salaries, is not approved by employees.

For the second time this year workers at New Process Gear in East Syracuse are being asked to make a choice between cutting their wages to keep their jobs, or face the possibility that the auto parts plant might close.

Officials at the plant owned by Magna International Inc. will soon present the board with a turnaround plan that includes, among other things, wage and benefits cuts. If the board approves the plan, workers will be asked to vote on the amendments.

Senior workers who make core products -- the majority of the plant's work force -- started the year earning $29.11 an hour. In February, union members approved a new contract with Magna cutting their wages to $20.16 an hour, or $334 in a week.

The proposed amendments push those wages even lower, to $16 per hour. That means their salaries would have dropped 45 percent, or $524 a week, since January.

Wages for non-skilled, non-core workers would fall to around $11 to $13 an hour.

That's low enough for a family of five to earn food stamps, said Terry Wood, of DeWitt, a 12-year veteran of the plant who works in the heat treat furnace area of the plant.

"When you say auto workers and food stamps in the same sentence that's something I never thought I'd hear," said Wood, who wore a red plastic wrist band imprinted with the words "Vote No" to a meeting Tuesday afternoon at the United Auto Workers Local 624 union hall in East Syracuse.

New Process Gear has long been one of the largest manufacturing employers in Central New York and has always paid some of the highest wages in the area. Cutting wages there would reverberate throughout the local economy.

"There will be a little less trade in local stores and services," said Roger Evans, a senior economist with the state Department of Labor.

In February, when New Process Gear employed 2,800 union and non-union workers, the plant had a $125 million pay roll, according to union officials. It had 55 New York state suppliers who employed 6,000 people.

The plant now employs about 1,900 after layoffs, retirements and workers who accepted buyouts to leave. The most recent layoffs came this week.

If the company closed the plant and cut the 1,900 jobs, the unemployment rate would spike by 0.5 percent to 6.2 percent, Evans said.

At the same time, it would be difficult for some of those workers to find new factory jobs even at the lower pay rate, he said. The manufacturing sector in the Onondaga, Oswego and Madison counties is in a recession, Evans said.

While there is demand for highly skilled factory workers, such as machinists, lower skilled workers would have a very hard time matching their prior earnings in Syracuse, he said.

In addition to proposed wage cuts, workers under the proposed new contract will also lose two holidays and vacation time. The company has offered a $1,500 contract signing bonus for workers hired after Chrysler sold the plant to Magna in 2004, and $2,500 to former Chrysler workers who would also receive the remaining $37,500 from an $87,500 transition payment the company promised in February.

In return for cutting wages earlier this year, the company was supposed to buy new equipment and bring more products into the plant. Several workers heading to the union meeting said the company hasn't fulfilled its promises.

"They wanted concessions and the (union) people gave it to them, and now they want more concessions," said Murray McArthur, of Syracuse, who has worked 10 years in the machining department.

"It's a tough economy, I know, but they haven't done a thing to make us more competitive," said Steve Arlukiewicz, of Camillus, an assembler who has worked 10 years at the plant.

In 2004, Chrysler sold New Process Gear to Magna for $435 million. To win the workers' blessing for the sale, management agreed to pay them wages negotiated under the Chrysler contract through 2011.

Magna offered workers several options earlier this year in an effort to get out from under the burden of those wages, cut staff and turn around a plant that lost $117 million last year. Workers could take a $100,000 buyout, or opt to go back to work at a different Chrysler plant or they could stay at New Process and accept lower wages and receive $87,500 over the life of the agreement to ease them into the new hourly rate.

UAW members accepted the contract.

But then, gas spiked to $4 a gallon and sales of trucks and sport utility vehicles, which use New Process Gear parts, plummeted.